Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Quinn was idly examining
the Tiltall tripod in Shaley’s studio while waiting for the photographer to
finish a phone call. As he handled the
tripod, Quinn noticed that his fingers were smudged with dust where they had
touched its metal surface.

Shaley eventually ended
the call and turned to see how his visitor was occupying himself. “Be careful with that,” he warned when he saw
Quinn still holding the tripod. “It’s
the old Leitz model. The center post
slides right out. Watch you don’t drop
it.”

Quinn slid the post up
and down. “Yes, I remember that much
from when I owned one myself. It’s solid
metal. A bit heavy maybe, but strong and
durable.”

“That’s why I’ve kept it
all these years. It’s perfect for studio
use.”

Quinn placed the tripod
upright on the floor. “I keep worrying
I’m going to interrupt you in the middle of a shoot the way I keep barging in
here. But I’ve yet to see you yet with a
camera in your hand. How do you manage
to take it so easy and still pay for all this?”

Shaley shot Quinn a
reproving look. “I don’t ask how you
make your rent, do I? How I schedule my
shoots and handle my workload is my business.”

“All the equipment’s in
the same place it was last time,” Quinn continued. “Nothing’s been touched. You can’t blame me for being curious how you manage
to pull it off.”

“I wish I could tell you
I was so successful I didn’t have to work as hard as I once did. But that’s not it.” Shaley pointed to a prescription container on
the desk beside him. “The truth is that
I’ve been having health problems – palpitations of the heart, according to my
doctor – and have had to start easing back whether I like it or not.” Shaley didn’t want to talk more about it. “What brings you here today? Not that I’m not happy to see you again.”

Quinn got to the
point. “Detective Sloane updated me when
I went to visit him yesterday. It was a
pretty disturbing experience. I
discovered I’d been on the wrong track all along. Every single thing I thought I knew about
Curwin and Ito turned out to be false.”

Shaley didn’t appear
particularly concerned. “We can’t be
right about everything all the time,” was all he said. Discussing his health problems had darkened
his mood.

“Yes, but I couldn’t
figure how I could have been so totally off base as I was here,” Quinn
persisted. He moved opposite Shaley’s
desk and sat down facing him. “When I
tried to go back in my mind to see how I’d screwed up so badly, I kept coming
back to our last conversation. It was
you who first mentioned to me Ito’s connection to the yakuza. Now I find out it’s not true. He never had any actual involvement with them
at all.”

“Hey,” Shaley
objected. “What I told you is common
knowledge. There are thousands of fan
websites for Japanese movies on the web.
You can go to any one of them and read there how deep Ito is in with the
mob. I didn’t come up with any of that
on my own.”

“I know you didn’t. I did a search online and saw the same shit
wherever I went. It was even mentioned
in Ito’s Wikipedia biography.”

“There you go then.” Shaley’s tone was complacent.

“But how did you come up with
the bit about the Wall Street investors who were financing him? Who told you about that? Or were you just making a lucky guess?”

“If there was any
speculation on my part, it doesn’t make a difference now, does it?” Shaley was tired of being questioned. “The bottom line is that what I told you was
true.”

“But you were the one who
tied the investors in with the yakuza.
When I learned of Curwin’s involvement, I figured he must have been
cutting deals with the mob himself.”

“I said at the time it
was only a rumor I’d heard, and from less than reliable sources at that. I can’t help it if you got carried away and
decided to follow it up on your own.”
Shaley gave Quinn a hard look.
“You know what I think is happening here? You messed up big time making reckless
accusations, and now you’re looking for someone to pin the blame on. Well, it’s not me. You pumped me for information and ended up
hearing what you wanted to hear. I
certainly can’t help it if you’ve got an overactive imagination.”

“I’m just trying to figure
out what happened,” Quinn insisted.

“Bullshit,” said
Shaley. “You’re just trying to cover
your ass. That’s what you’re doing. And I’m damned if I’m going to let you make
me into a scapegoat.”

“But…”

“But nothing,” Shaley
fairly shouted. He pointed to the
door. “It’s time for you to leave and
not come back till you’ve got your head on straight. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” said Quinn
as he rose from his seat. “Sorry for
taking up your time.”

Later that evening, Quinn
sat in his apartment recounting to Mayla all that had been said at his meetings
with Sloane and Shaley.

“Shaley didn’t act very
well,” was Mayla’s only observation.

“No, I realize that. He was being an SOB, but that doesn’t mean he
wasn’t right. It really is my fault I
jumped the gun the way I did. I let my
feelings for Penelope get in the way of my judgment. I wanted
her husband to be guilty.”

“You were just trying to
find your father’s killer. No one can
blame you for that.”

“I don’t know,” replied
Quinn. “Sloane warned me to stay away
from the case and let the police handle it, but I was too stubborn to
listen. I thought they were taking too
long and that I could do in a day what they hadn’t been able to accomplish in
weeks. That was just my ego leading me
on. Sloane was right all along when he
told me I was no detective. I should
have paid more attention to him and used my common sense.”

“I don’t want to make you
feel any worse than you do now,” said Mayla as she exhaled a stream of
cigarette smoke, “but you might want to take a look at today’s paper if you
haven’t already seen the headline.” She
reached into her tote bag and pulled out a copy of the city’s biggest selling
tabloid. Across the top of the front
page, in the largest type size available, the heading screamed “Yakuza Take
Over Wall Street!”

“Oh, no,” Quinn
moaned. “Tell me this isn’t about
Curwin.”

“Sorry. They not only identified him by name, but
they also included his whole biography going back to his high school days. There’s even a wedding photo showing him with
Penelope on the big day. Further back,
in the Business section, they have another article that details how he took his
company to the top. Curwin certainly was
a high roller, wasn’t he? I was
impressed.”

“That’s it then. He’s finished.” Quinn didn’t bother to take the paper Mayla
held out to him. “I don’t even need to
see it to know that much.”

Mayla put the paper
down. “You can check it out later if you
want. They also have an article on
Lachner, that friend of your father’s you told me about who’s getting ready to
testify. And there’s an editorial, of
course, calling for an end to such corruption.”

“I don’t care so much
about Lachner,” Quinn pointed out. “He
was going down anyway once the Feds had made their case and finished gathering
evidence. I have no sympathy for
him. Curwin’s a different story
though. As far as I know, he never did
anything wrong. I ended up destroying an
innocent man’s life for no reason at all.”

“You didn’t set out to
hurt him,” Mayla reminded him. “It just
happened that way.”

But Quinn couldn’t accept
that. “I don’t know why I wasn’t able to
see straight. Instead, I couldn’t make
out what was right there in front of me.
It was like someone was holding a dark veil over my eyes that obscured
and distorted everything I saw. I didn’t
know what was real and what was only in my imagination. I can’t understand how I could have been so
completely mistaken about everything.”

“There’s no point sitting
here feeling sorry for yourself. It’s over
now. Things could still work out for
Curwin. Even if he loses his business,
there’s no reason he can’t start over, is there? I’m sure he’s got millions socked away by
now.”

“That doesn’t
matter. Once his business goes bust, his
investors will hound him with litigation for the rest of his life. And no one on the Street will ever trust him
again. When it’s all over, Curwin will
be lucky to get a job waiting tables.”

“Don’t think about it,
Quinn. You’re only going to make
yourself more upset.”

“You don’t
understand. How can I not think about it
when I’m the one who set all this in motion? I can’t imagine what this guy must
think of me for having done all this to him.
I could never look him in the eye again if my life depended on it.”

Mayla lit another
cigarette. “I wonder if his wife will
stick with him. If Penelope only married
him for his money, then she’ll probably catch the next bus out of town.”

“I don’t know what’s
going to happen there,” Quinn confessed.
“The only thing I’m sure of is that she’ll never forgive me for what
I’ve done. I’ve messed her life up just
as much as I have her husband’s.”

“You wanted her to leave
him anyway, didn’t you?” Mayla asked.

“Not that way I
didn’t. And who was I to break up a
marriage in the first place? If I’d
stayed away, they could have kept living their lives together just as they’d
been doing. They had everything going
for them and now, thanks to me, they’ve got nothing.”

“Maybe in the long run
it’s for the best. There’s nothing
stopping Penelope now from going off with you.
I’m sure you can make her happier than her husband ever did.”

Quinn looked at his
neighbor in disbelief. “I could never
have any sort of relationship with Penelope after this. I’m sure she must hate me, and even if she
didn’t I’d be consumed by guilt every time I looked at her. What would she and I have to look forward to?”

“You’ve got to stop being
so hard on yourself. That’s not going to
do anyone any good. You know that. You’ve got to pull yourself together and try
to work things out.”

Quinn could only shake
his head. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll walk
you to your door.”

When they arrived at her
apartment Mayla tried to distract Quinn from his misery by pointing out to him a
rusted patch soldered onto the metal of her front door. “That’s to cover a bullet hole,” she
said. “Behan was the one who told me
about it.”

Quinn snapped out of his
reverie long enough to put his hand on the door. “It must make a great conversation piece when
you’re entertaining visitors. How did it
get there?”

“According to Behan there
was another actress living in my apartment back in 1980. Her name was Ellen, he said, and I gathered
she was part of a small time song and dance act. Behan told me he went once to watch her perform
at the Copa in the days when it was still at its old location on East 60th
Street. He wasn’t too impressed by what
he saw.”

“Oh no, not another
failed romance for poor Behan. What did
this Ellen look like?”

“Behan never described
her in detail. The only thing he mentioned
was that she was a brunette with bobbed hair.
I asked if she were pretty, but all he said was ‘sort of,’ so I really
don’t know. I’m not sure he had any
romantic interest in her to begin with.”

“And she was the one who
was shot?”

Mayla shook her
head. “No, it was her boyfriend who was
killed.”

“Ok, I can see I’m in for it. Go ahead and give me the grisly details.”

“You know how we show
business people are – we don’t always have the best judgment. It seems while she was living here Ellen took
up with a drug dealer who’d been in prison in some South American banana
republic. Afterwards, he and his wife
made it across the border and rented an apartment here in the
neighborhood. That’s when Ellen met him.”

“I get it. Another immigrant out to win fame and fortune
in the big city.”

“He also rented out a
store on Amsterdam Avenue as a front, put a few dusty pocketbooks in the window
and used the place to deal. Behan told
me how it cracked him up to watch a bunch of junkies nodding out in front of a
handbag store every morning while waiting to score. He said they didn’t look the type to be much
interested in a woman’s accessories unless they were planning on snatching her
purse.”

Quinn was listening more closely
now. “The cops must have caught on, no?”

“Oh, or course they knew
about it. But it was a different
neighborhood then. Once a friend of mine
wandered mistakenly into a thrift shop on 82nd Street without
knowing it was a drop off for numbers runners.
She asked if they had any used dresses for sale, and the two creeps
behind the counter cursed her out big time and then hustled her onto the
street.

“Anyway, things started
to get really hairy when the dealer – Behan never even learned his name –
started pushing coke and smack out of Ellen’s apartment after the handbag store
shut down. Seems the neighbors got
really freaked finding junkies shooting up in the stairwell at two in the
morning. They wanted him out and Ellen
along with him.”

“They probably didn’t get
anywhere, though, did they?” asked Quinn.
“It’s not that easy getting someone out of a rent stabilized apartment
no matter what shit he’s pulling.”

“In the end, they didn’t
have to. Seems the dealer’s wife finally
got wind of what was going on between the two lovebirds and didn’t take kindly
to her husband romancing Ellen.

“One night, as the dealer
was coming up the stairs, the wife’s nephew was waiting, gun in hand, on the
landing above. I don’t know if he said
anything to the dealer or just started shooting, but when it was all over the
dealer was lying dead in the hallway with one bullet in his crotch and two more
in his chest. He never had a chance.

“The cops arrived after
everyone in the building had called 911, and they eventually got around to
knocking on Behan’s door. They wanted to
know if he’d ever seen the dealer around the building. When Behan, trying to be vague and wanting
stay out of it, said he wasn’t sure, the detectives asked him to come down to
my floor to see if the corpse looked familiar.
They were hoping he could save them some time by giving them a positive
ID.

“Behan said when he got
there the corpse had already been dragged from its original position, and what
was left of the guy’s balls had left a big smear of blood on the hallway
carpet. The cops looked at Behan and
waited to see how he’d react. ‘People
look different when they’re dead,’ Behan told them. By then, he just wanted to get it done with
and go back to bed. ‘But yeah, that’s
the guy. He’s wearing the same clothes I
saw him in last.’”

“And that was the end of
it?” Quinn asked.

“It should’ve been,
right? But then things took a funny
turn.”

“How could it have gotten
any weirder than it already was?”

“Another neighbor, this one a prissy dance
teacher from Boston who was always giving Behan dirty looks when she caught him
smoking grass in the hallway, rang his bell and asked him to chip in $20 to help
clean up the mess the dealer’s bloodstains had left on the hallway carpet. Behan gave her a few bucks to get rid of her,
but it didn’t do any good. The teacher
brought in a company that was supposed to specialize in disaster cleanups. She found them in the Yellow Pages of all
places. Even those guys weren’t able to
get the stains out, though, so they ended up just pouring some bleach over
them.”

“What happened to Ellen?”

“She got more and more screwed
up on coke and eventually took up with one of the late dealer’s friends so
she’d have a source of supply. By then
she was probably on the needle herself.
Finally, she and her new boyfriend moved out of the building. ‘Good riddance,’ Behan said, ‘Believe me when
I tell you no one was sad to see that pair leave.’”

Quinn whistled
softly. “That’s some fucking story all
right. People forget sometimes how rough
this neighborhood once was.”

“Underneath, some of it’s
still that way,” Mayla said. “You just
have to look harder to see it.”

Friday, May 25, 2018

This is another tourist I met in Central Park last year. She was walking with a group of friends, all of them visiting from Europe. They were all very friendly and this particular woman was especally photogenic. One of the best things about New York City is that I'm constantly meeting people from different parts of the world.

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Quinn arrived unannounced
at Sloane’s office early the next afternoon.
He found the detective once again eating lunch amid the piles of paper thrown
about his desk. Not much had changed
since Quinn’s last visit. If anything,
the mess had grown larger.

“Nice to see you,”
remarked Sloane as he wolfed down his pastrami & corned beef on rye. A stream of mustard leaked from it onto the
front of his polka dot shirt. “I was
beginning to think I was finally going to have enough peace and quiet to get
some work done.”

“No reason to break with
tradition after all this time.” Quinn was only half joking. “Just keep going the way you always have and
the crimes will solve themselves.”

Sloane gave him a
lopsided smile and then picked up his strawberry milkshake and drank half of it
in a single chug. “Why waste your humor
on me? There are half a dozen comedy
clubs nearby whose audiences would pay good money to watch you perform.”

“If you keep stuffing
your face like that you won’t live long enough to join them.” Quinn recoiled as Sloane took another huge
bite of his sandwich.

Sloane didn’t bother to
respond. “Believe it or not, I’m
actually glad you showed up. Saves me
the trouble of calling you and telling you what I’ve learned.”

Sloane pushed his lunch
aside and picked up a report from his desk.
“You’ll be happy to know that the building manager on 33rd
Street got back yesterday from his extended Caribbean holiday. Turns out he took off for a fling with his
secretary while his wife was out of town.
What a trip to paradise that ended up being. He was only supposed to have been gone for a
week, but while he’s sitting on the beach drinking a mojito and holding hands
with this Bronx Latina young enough to be his daughter, he gets bit by a
mosquito. No big deal, right? The next thing he knows he’s in a hospital
bed being treated for chikungunya.”

“Check it out for
yourself if you don’t believe me. There
are stories all over the news of Americans falling sick after having been
bitten on their sun filled vacations.
The virus doesn’t usually kill, but it’s nasty enough all the same.”

“Ok, ok. I’ll take your word for it.”

“Anyway, the manager was
back on his feet by the time I talked to him and was able to confirm that there
had been construction going on in the building during the time he was away. Those bricks that almost clobbered you fell
from a windowsill where some mentally deficient masonry worker had left them
before knocking off for the day.” Sloane
looked Quinn in the eye. “No one was
trying to kill you. It was an
accident. You were just in the wrong
place at the wrong time. Nothing more
than that.”

For a second Quinn was at
a loss for words. His face fell as he
realized the implications of what he was hearing. “You mean it wasn’t deliberate?” he finally
asked.

“That’s what I’m trying
to tell you.” Sloane finished what was
left of his sandwich. “There wasn’t
anyone in the building at the time it happened.
We also talked to the night watchman when he came on shift. He finally admitted that he’d decided his
boss shouldn’t have all the fun – he probably wanted a piece of that secretary
himself – and was down the block at the strip club having himself a lap dance when
the bricks came tumbling down. Hadn’t
the slightest idea anything had happened while he’d been away. He probably had so much to drink he wouldn’t
have noticed if those bricks had landed on his own head.”

“So that’s that then?”

“We turned the matter
over to the Buildings Department. The owner
has a history of employing non-union workers and of doing repairs without
getting the proper permits. They’ll hit
him with a fine, all right, but that will most likely be the end of it. I don’t think you have much chance for a
lawsuit since you weren’t injured and didn’t take the time to report what had
happened.”

“I wasn’t planning to sue
anybody,” said Quinn. He was still
trying to take in what he’d been told.

“And that’s not the only
thing,” Sloane went on.

“Isn’t that enough? What else did you come up with?”

“One Stanislas Kubinski
is what. Unemployed pipe welder who’s
been living in the country illegally for the past three years. He’s currently residing with his wife and
five kids in Glen Oaks near the Nassau County line.”

“What about him?” Quinn searched his memory. “I never heard of the guy.”

“Mr. Kubinski has a
drinking problem. Of course, if I were
unemployed and had a wife and five kids to support I’d probably be hitting the
sauce myself.”

Quinn tried to check his
impatience. “Are you going anywhere with
this, or are you just having fun jerking me around?”

“Mr. Kubinski has a bad
habit of getting behind the wheel when he’s been drinking. The car he drives belongs to his
father-in-law. It’s a black SUV with
tinted windows.”

Quinn saw then where
Sloane was headed. “Just like the one
that tried to run me and Violeta down in Chelsea. Right?”

“You catch on quick,
don’t you? The plate number begins with
‘JZY’ just as your roommate said it did.”

Quinn began pacing the
width of Sloane’s tiny office. “So
you’re saying that was an accident too.
Is that it? Just a drunk driver
out for a joyride?”

“Kubinski’s been charged
before for the same offense. Pleaded
guilty three times to DWI, but for some reason he’s still got his license. Can you beat that? Your friend Violeta did a good thing letting
us know about him. Sooner or later that
putz would have killed someone. As it
was, he smashed up a whole line of parked cars last month on West 16th
Street while he was trying to find himself an empty space.”

“What happens to him
now?”

“After his next court
appearance, he and his family get turned over to ICE. They’ll be on their way back to Warsaw soon
enough.”

Quinn sat down heavily on
the chair opposite Sloane’s desk. “I
can’t believe it. I was so sure there
was someone after me.”

“There is,” Sloane
reminded him. “That shot that was fired
at you outside your building was no accident.
Someone was either trying to warn you or to kill you. The other two ‘attempts’ may have been
nothing but figments of your overactive imagination, but not that one. This is no time to let your guard down.”

Quinn ignored the advice. “What I really came by for was to find out
what happened when you questioned Curwin about his connection with Ito. Did you get anywhere with him? Or did he just tell you to wait until he had
his lawyer present?”

Sloane frowned. “No.
Curwin didn’t need any lawyer.
That’s because he wasn’t the one who killed Behan. He can account for his whereabouts at the
time of the murder.”

Quinn was dubious. “Are you sure his alibi is for real?”

“Did you ever see the
picture Curwin’s got in his office of him shaking hands with the mayor? That was taken at a benefit for retired
firefighters held the same evening Behan was killed. The party went on until two in the
morning. So unless you want me to arrest
the mayor as an accomplice to murder, you’re going to have to come up with
another suspect.”

But Quinn wasn’t ready to
give up yet. “I’m pretty sure the next
thing you’re going to tell me is that Ito’s in the clear too.”

“He was working late in
Bushwick directing a scene from his new film.
The entire cast and production crew can vouch he was there the whole
time. He spent half an hour with the
script girl working on the dialog while everyone else tried to stay awake.”

“So you don’t have any
leads at all? I can’t believe this. There has to be something. What about the shot that was fired at me
outside my building? Why can’t you do
like the detectives on TV and check ballistics?”

“Oh, thank you so much for telling me how to
do my job. Ballistics. What a great idea. Why didn’t that ever occur to me?” Sloane slapped his forehead. “You dope.
Don’t you think that’s the first thing I did?”

“How should I know what
you did and didn’t do?”

“Well, you can rest easy,
Sherlock. We ran the test and it turned
out to be the same gun that was used on Behan.
Not that there was any big surprise there.” Sloane tried to look angry but ended up
laughing instead. “Ballistics,” he
muttered in disbelief. Then he
straightened up. “But it doesn’t do us
much good knowing it was the same gun if we don’t know who fired it. We’re back to square one.”

For a long while after
that Quinn said nothing. He slumped into
a chair and sat staring at the wall, plainly struggling to come to terms with
everything Sloane had just told him.
“Looks like I’m not much of a detective after all,” he said at
last. “I was so sure it was Curwin, and
now instead I find out I was wrong about everything.”

“Theories are fine and
dandy,” Sloane pointed out. “But they
aren’t worth shit if there’s no evidence to back them up. You ran off half cocked with the first notion
that entered your head. That’s not the
right way to go about things. First you
look at the evidence, and then you come up with a theory based on what you’ve
got. You had it ass backwards.”

“I fucked up all
right.” Quinn hung his head. “I guess I owe Curwin an apology.”

“A big one,” Sloane
agreed. “The guy’s in shit up to his
eyeballs thanks to you.”

Quinn was thoroughly
confused. “Why is that? I never accused him in public of having done
anything wrong.”

“You didn’t have to. You told your suspicions to Lachner. That was all it took. Once he turned himself in, the first thing he
started babbling about was Curwin’s involvement with the yakuza. I guess he was hoping that if he threw the
press a bone like that he could hold back for a while on his own shady
dealings. Now it’s in the SEC’s hands.”

“And they’re going to
take Lachner’s word for it?”

“They have no choice in
the matter,” Sloane explained. “They
can’t ignore anything Lachner’s saying, not after all the media attention he’s
gotten. There’ll be an examination of
Curwin’s tax records, interviews with his partners and investors, the whole nine
yards.”

“But what if it turns out
there’s nothing there?” asked Quinn.
“When I met Curwin, he told me he was making a legitimate investment,
one that brought in a huge profit.
There’s nothing illegal in that.
Everything I told Lachner about the yakuza being involved was all second
hand information. I had no way of
knowing whether it was true or not.”

“Exactly. You were just shooting your fat mouth off the
same as always. And now the SEC is
forced to check everything out to see if there’s anything at all to these wild
speculations. They can’t very well hand
Curwin a pass and forget about it.”

“But what if the SEC goes
through with all this and it turns out Curwin’s clean? The damage will already be done. A financier’s whole business depends on his reputation. Who’s going to invest their money with
someone who’s suspected of working with the yakuza? Once the story comes out, the tabloids will
have a field day with it and Curwin will be washed up whether he’s guilty or
not.”

“It’s a little late for
you to start thinking of that now. You
were the one who blabbed his head off to Lachner and set this whole thing in
motion.” Sloane leaned back in his
chair. “What do you care all of a sudden
what happens to Curwin anyway? You’ve hated
the guy’s guts all along. I’d have
thought you’d be happy as hell if he ended up in the gutter.”

“When I put you onto him,
I was sure he had killed Behan. Now
you’re telling me he didn’t, that he couldn’t have because he was somewhere
else when my father was shot. I don’t
want to ruin an innocent man. How I feel
about him personally doesn’t matter.”

Sloane couldn’t contain
his anger. “Why do you think I kept
telling you to stay out of this and let the police handle it? This is what happens when you play
detective. You go blundering around
accusing innocent people and saying the first thing that comes into your
head. The next thing you know, you’ve
trashed someone’s reputation.”

“I never meant to hurt
anyone,” Quinn protested.

“You know how many times
a policeman hears that line?” Sloane shot back.
“But look at it this way – if Curwin goes down, at least you’ll have a
clear field with his wife.”

Quinn jumped up from his
chair. “Is that what you really believe? That I’d deliberately destroy someone just to
make it easier to get into bed with his wife?”

Sloane drank the last of
his milkshake. “You wouldn’t be the
first to hit low to rid yourself of a husband who’s in the way. It happens every day. Trust me on that.”

“If that’s really what
you think of me, I’ve got nothing more to say to you.” Quinn turned his back on Sloane and made his
way slowly to the door.

After having left the
station house, Quinn walked west along Canal.
He passed the storefront where Pearl Paint, its sign still in place, had
been forced to close by rising rents.
Finally he came to Varick where he caught an uptown C train to 34th
Street.

When Ito saw who his
caller was, he took a quick step back into his studio.

“You don’t have to
worry,” said Quinn. “I’m not here to
harass you any longer. I’m done with
that. I actually came to apologize for
the way I’ve acted.”

Ito, his white hair
falling wildly over his shoulders, stood regarding Quinn silently for a moment,
then swung the door fully open so his visitor could enter.

“Thanks,” said Quinn as
he walked past the door. “If you’d
slammed it shut in my face, it would only have been what I deserved.”

“It would serve no purpose for me to be
rude. Even when sorely tried, we
Japanese believe it’s best to follow the rules of politeness as far as we can.”

“You’re one up on this baka gaijin then.” Quinn took note of the empty packing cases
that littered the studio floor. “Are you
going somewhere?”

A rueful expression
crossed Ito’s countenance as he turned to survey the boxes. “Back to Tokyo. I have a flight out of Newark Airport
tomorrow afternoon. My assistants will
send the rest of my belongings afterwards.”

Ito relaxed slightly but
remained standing. He didn’t offer a
seat to Quinn. “It’s no secret what’s
happening. I’m losing my top investor,
and the others will follow suit as soon as they hear the news. Without the assistance of Curwin-san, I have
nowhere to turn.”

“What about the movie?”
Quinn wanted to know. “Aren’t you going
to finish it?”

“Luckily, it was almost
completed when all this occurred. I have
only a few scenes left to shoot, and I will hopefully be able to secure
financing in Japan that will allow me to finish those remaining portions. It should not be too difficult to find the
right locations.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call
your films works of art, and I don’t think it would be all that much of a loss
to the world if this one were never released,” Quinn said, “but I’m still sorry
I messed things up for you. I know you
must have put a lot of effort into making it.”

“Who is to say what’s art
and what isn’t?” Ito asked. “Are you
really able to judge?”

Quinn knew at once he’d
misspoken. “No, you’re right. I’m not qualified to criticize your
work. I only said that just now to keep
myself from feeling guilty over what I’ve done to you. For all I know, it could be a masterpiece of
Japanese cinema that I’ve ruined.”

“You’ve become much less obnoxious than you
were on the last several occasions we met.
Perhaps your eyes have at last been opened.” Ito examined Quinn more closely. “There really isn’t any point in berating
yourself. Everything is a matter of
karma. If my film wasn’t meant to be
completed, then there’s nothing that can be done about it. So there’s really no need for you to suffer
remorse over what has occurred.”

“I don’t know if it’s as
hopeless as all that.” Quinn paused as
he chose his next words carefully. “I
imagine you still have backers in Japan who can help.”

Ito understood at
once. “You’re referring to the yakuza,
aren’t you? It’s those anti-social
elements in Japan that Curwin-san is accused of having consorted with.”

“I imagine there are all
sorts of legitimate businesses that have been infiltrated by organized crime
over the years. And not just in Japan
either. I’m willing to make allowances
for what happened to you. The mob has so
many legitimate fronts that probably when you were first offered money you
weren’t fully aware of its source.”

Ito sat down and, without
looking at him, began to speak to Quinn as patiently as if he were a small
child. “I have never in my life been
involved with the yakuza, and that is the truth. What really happened is that more than twenty
years ago I made a film about the life of a notorious gangster who had
eventually become the head, the godfather, of a large crime syndicate. At the time, the studio thought it would be
good publicity to circulate a rumor that the yakuza had had a hand in the
making of the film and had helped fund it.”

For a second Quinn was
speechless. “So you’re saying there was
no truth to any of it, that you never had any actual involvement with the
yakuza?”

Ito’s laughter was
sardonic. “Do I look so completely crazy
to you as that? No Japanese in his right
mind would have anything to do with those gangsters if he could avoid it. Perhaps at the time I should have argued more
forcefully with the studio executives when they suggested such a foolish stunt,
but I never thought anyone would take it seriously. As far as I was concerned, it was no more
than a ploy to lure moviegoers into the theater.”

Quinn watched helplessly as
his carefully constructed theories crumbled to dust before him. “What about those photos of Curwin’s wife,
Penelope, you had here in your studio?
Did you really only keep them for inspiration as you told me?”

The question took Ito by
surprise. “Yes, those were wonderful
photographs that Behan took. Looking at
truly imaginative art has always helped me be more creative in my own
work. Why do you ask? What other reason did you think I had for
possessing them?”

“To be honest, I thought
you might have been contemplating giving Penelope a role in your film. She’s very beautiful, you know.”

Ito laughed outright at
Quinn’s suggestion. “How amusing,” he
said. “Penelope is indeed a very
beautiful woman and Curwin-san is a lucky man to have married her. But you must realize that she unfortunately
has no more appreciation of my work than you do. I do not believe she likes me very much at
all. She tries to avoid me at every
opportunity.”

“But you visited her the
very day I was first here,” Quinn reminded him.

Ito lifted his eyebrows
in surprise. “That’s very true. Now that you mention it, I remember that I
did travel to Curwin-san’s apartment on Fifth Avenue that same day. Once I found out that the photographs in my
studio had been taken by your deceased father, I wanted to return them to their
rightful owner before you could accuse me of having stolen them. That would have been the final straw as you
Americans so colorfully put it.” Ito studied
Quinn carefully. “How did you manage to
discover my whereabouts?”

Quinn saw no further need
for subterfuge. “I waited downstairs and
followed you,” he confessed. He wasn’t
able to look Ito in the eyes as he said it.

“So,” was Ito’s only
comment.

“I’m sorry,” Quinn
apologized as his face reddened. “No one
knows better than I how stupidly I’ve acted.
I’m ashamed of myself.”

Ito shook his head
sadly. “Do not be too harsh when judging
yourself. It’s the fate of all men to
act without judgment when they allow their emotions to cloud their reason. You are really no different from anyone
else.”

“It’s good of you to be
so understanding.” Quinn finally rested
his eyes on Ito’s face. “I can’t believe
how wrong I’ve been about everything I was once so sure of.”

Ito approached Quinn
slowly. He reached up to put a hand on
his shoulder. “Sometimes ignorance
cannot be helped. It’s never easy to see
the truth, and often what we think is real is no more than a dream from which
we must eventually wake.”

Monday, May 21, 2018

Every photographer knows of the classic photographs taken in the 1930's for the FSA (the Farm Security Administration). Part of Roosevelt's New Deal, the FSA was established to provide work for photographers by documenting the effects of the Great Depression A number of legendary photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange created a body of work that showed the human toll the economic disaster exacted from the country.

What I had not previously known was that many images by these same photographers were routinely censored by punching a hole through the negatives that prevented even cropped prints being made from them. While some of this was understandable, as in the case of photos that were too obviously staged or that were technically flawed, in other instances the motivation was more obscure and one suspects the offending images may have been censored for violating social taboos.

Luckily, none of the mutilated negatives were destroyed but instead eventually entered the archives of the Library of Congress where they were only recently digitized. In this form they were then discovered by Nayia Yiakoumaki, a curator at London's Whitechapel Gallery, who decided to mount a show. She writes:

"I was astonished when I learned of the existence of the rejected negatives. These are photographers and images that I have studied and taught, but I had not realised that the images we know so well were only part of a much larger story."

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

“You knew your husband
was going to take a shot at me, didn’t you?” Quinn demanded. His voice rang out loudly in the small
confines of the wine bar. The other
customers turned as one to stare at the table where he and Penelope were
seated. Several of them, eager to
capture any distubrance on video, readied their smartphones in anticipation.

“No, Quinn, no. I swear I didn’t.”

Quinn grasped his
companion’s wrist and pulled her to him.

Penelope cried out in
pain. “That hurts.”

Quinn looked down at his
hand as though it were somehow independent of him and had acted on its
own. “I’m sorry.” An aggrieved expression crossed his face as
he regarded the red imprints his fingers had left on Penelope’s arm. He immediately released his grip.

“How do you know it was
Cecil who shot at you?” Penelope asked as she rubbed her bruised skin. “Did you recognize him? Are you sure?”

“Who else could it have
been?” Quinn countered, but in a lower
tone of voice. “He’s the only one who
has any reason to want me dead. Curwin
knows I’m going to expose him as Behan’s murderer, and he wants to keep me from
doing that at any cost. Maybe this was
just a warning and he had no intention of actually killing me, but this was his
work all right.”

“It’s all in your
imagination. My husband has never shot
anyone in his life. We’re living in a
city where illegal guns are constantly killing people. You might not even have been the target. It might have been a stray bullet from some
drug dealer’s gun.”

“This is the Upper West
Side, not East New York. There haven’t
been any drug dealers running wild in this neighborhood since the 1970’s.” Quinn waved his hand dismissively. “Besides, there’s another reason I think your
husband might want to get rid of me.”

“You think he’s jealous,
don’t you? All we did the other day was
have lunch. I don’t know how Cecil found
out about it this time, but he did. And
yes, he was incredibly upset. Still,
that’s not enough to turn him into a homicidal maniac.”

Quinn took Penelope’s
hand, only much more gently, as he stared into her glittering yellow eyes. “Just lunch?
Is that all it was to you? Tell
me right now there was nothing more to it than that. You can’t because you know we both felt
something pass between us.”

As Quinn sat regarding
her, Penelope was overwhelmed by memories come flooding back. “It’s strange, but Behan used to say almost the
exact same thing. He’d beg me to admit I
felt something for him. But I
couldn’t. There wasn’t anything inside
me to give him.”

Quinn turned away his
eyes and looked about the wine bar – its Italian name fashionably
unpronounceable – where they sat drinking their lattes. He was embarrassed and wanted to change the
subject. “Forty years ago, this was a
junkie coffee shop called Little Joe’s.
It had a rack of stale doughnuts and a sandwich grill, but mostly it was
a place for pushers to sell smack. You
could tell who the addicts were easily enough by the way they held the sugar
dispensers over their paper coffee cups.
They could never get it sweet enough.
In the summer, instead of putting in air conditioning, the shop’s owners
would simply take out the plate glass windows and let the junkies fall off
their stools onto the sidewalk outside.

“I remember there was an after-hours
club for pimps only – they actually had to have women walking the streets to
get inside – a block further up on Columbus.
We’d watch those pimps drive down from Harlem and park their brand new Cadillacs
at the curb. After they’d finished
partying, they came in here to buy dope to shoot up the whores they had working
for them. Once the women were hooked, it
was a lot easier to keep them in line.”

“Charming,” said Penelope.
“You sound like you actually miss those
days.”

“At least the
neighborhood was alive then, not just some stodgy real estate investment the
way it is today. We had a lot more fun back
then, believe me. I was just a kid but I
can still remember what it was like. There
were plenty of times Behan hung out with Shaley at McGlade & Ward’s on the
next corner and spent the night there knocking back boilermakers until they
were both too shitfaced to even stand.
There was a party every night on this block, but nobody ever called the
cops. The whole West Side was more
diverse; it wasn’t just a bunch of uptight white business people in expensive
suits. There were plenty of actors and
dancers living in brownstone apartments in the days when rents were cheap.”

Penelope smiled. “Behan always talked about the old days in
this neighborhood too.”

“It’s not just this area
that’s changed; it’s the whole city that’s gone to shit.”

“Maybe that’s why you
take your father’s death so hard. You
see it as the end of an era. For you,
it’s more than just the killing of a single individual. It’s the loss of a city.”

Quinn considered. “I never thought of it that way,” he
admitted.

Penelope took advantage
of Quinn’s change in mood. “If you could
get past your suspicions of Cecil for a moment,” she asked, “is there anyone
else you can think of who might have been involved in Behan’s murder?”

“That’s just it. There isn’t anyone else, except maybe Cecil’s
pornographer friend Ito. And if Ito was
involved, I can’t believe your husband wouldn’t know anything about it. And why should Ito have been driven to commit
murder in the first place? He had no motive. The films he makes aren’t illegal, just
disgusting. Even if Behan had managed to
get something on him, all Ito had to do was fly home to Japan and leave it all
behind.”

“Don’t you see that
you’re only going around in circles?” Penelope couldn’t hide her vexation. “Cecil would have had as little motive as
Ito, and he certainly possesses more than enough wealth to protect himself from
whatever threat Behan could have posed.”

“So you’re saying I
should just let it go?”

“I’m saying you should
let the police handle it. Isn’t that
what everyone else is telling you to do?”
Penelope sipped from the latte in front of her; it had already grown
cold.

“Yes, especially the
police themselves.”

“Maybe it’s good advice
then.”

“If I did drop it, you
wouldn’t have me around to annoy you any longer.”

“You’re not annoying me,
just driving me crazy.” Penelope sighed
as she said it.

Quinn laughed. “I only wish I were able to drive you crazy.”

Penelope reached over and
pulled a long red hair from the sleeve of Quinn’s Armani jacket. “Oh, I think you’ve already found a woman to
drive crazy. You’re not going to tell me
your dark eyed Brazilian roommate has red hair, are you?”

Quinn found himself
blushing. “That’s from my neighbor
Mayla. She’s an actress living in my
building.”

“It’s ok,” said Penelope. She kept her voice light. “You don’t have to explain. All we did was have lunch. I’m sure you didn’t tell your redheaded
friend it was anything more than that.
Assuming you told her anything at all.”

“Wow,” said Quinn. “You’re jealous. Just listen to yourself talk.”

Penelope frowned. “Please, let’s stop acting like
schoolchildren. I’m a married woman. Wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t see one
another again?”

Quinn seemed not to have
expected her to leave so soon. “I won’t
see you again?”

“You have my number if
you want to call. But I’m not interested
in hearing any more paranoid suspicions regarding my husband, or any other
theories at all for that matter. That’s
finished as far as I’m concerned.”

“What if I just want to
talk with you again?”

“I like you, and I’m
attracted to you. But it’s not going any
further than that.”

“Now who’s being unfair? You know I’m already in love with you.”

“Then start acting like
an adult and prove it.” Penelope turned
on her heel and walked out onto Columbus to hail a cab.

“We have a few things to
talk over, Ito.”

They weren’t at the
director’s midtown studio this time.
Instead, Quinn had ridden the L train down to Bushwick where Ito was
working in a large production facility near Flushing Avenue. The address had been listed on Ito’s website.

Ito was beyond
annoyed. “Why must you keep bothering
me?”

“Because someone shot at
me and tried to kill me, and I’d like to find out who the hell it was. You can understand how I’d want to know.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t
me,” said Ito. His tone was
defiant. “I have no gun.”

“I didn’t think it was
you that pulled the trigger. But you
know who it was that wanted me dead, and you’re damned well going to tell
me. I’m going to make you talk even if I
have to beat the living daylights out of you right here.”

An assistant approached
Ito. She was in her early twenties,
blonde with blue eyes. She held a
clapperboard in her hand. “We’re ready
to start, sir,” she informed the director.

“Right away,” Ito
said. He turned to Quinn. “If you really must go on like this, wait a
few minutes at least until I finish this scene.
It’s for a ‘women in prison’ film.
We’ve been working on it all morning.
I want to get it wrapped up before moving on to anything else.”

Quinn walked to the side of
the set along with Ito and stood where he could watch the entire sequence as it
was filmed.

A bamboo stockade fence had been erected. A couple of thatched huts to the side stood
in for prisoner barracks. In the center
of the stage, which had been loosely covered with sand, a nude Filipina woman
had been bent face down over a saw horse, her arms and legs fastened to the
support legs so that she couldn’t move.

Two actors playing guards
approached the woman. They were wearing
moth-eaten uniforms that might have been relics from a World War II propaganda film.

“What happens next?”
Quinn asked.

“Bad things,” replied
Ito.

Quinn didn’t ask any more
questions. He stood silently with Ito
while the fake soldiers armed themselves with buckets and a red enema bag. The woman watched them apprehensively but was
unable to defend herself when they descended upon her.

After the take had been
completed to his satisfaction, Ito started to walk away. Quinn followed. The two guards were left behind to untie the
woman and clean her up.

“Now let’s finish with this
nonsense,” said Ito. “If I have
investors or partners in my business, that information is private. Their identities are of no concern to you.”

“You’ll excuse me,” Quinn
interrupted, “but people shooting at me is of big concern to me. At the moment, my respect for your right to
privacy is pretty well nonexistent.”

The director rolled his
eyes. “What you imagine is of no
consequence to me. I’m tired of you
threatening me and trying to intimidate me.
If you want to hit me, go ahead and do it. I will only call Detective Sloane and have
you arrested.”

Quinn stared at Ito for
several seconds without blinking.
“You’re taking a hard line, but I can see you’re really scared
shitless. Why don’t you level with me
and tell me what you know? The police
will give you protection if you cooperate.”

Ito gave Quinn a blank
look. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m in no danger from anyone, least of all
from my business associates. You’re
talking foolishly again.”

“Why are you so nervous
then?” Quinn persisted. “You never
expected to become involved in murder, did you?
Now you’re in so deep you can’t get out.
Meanwhile, whoever you’re covering for is going to keep killing. And you may be next. Your American business associates, not to
mention the yakuza, may not have enough faith in your ability to keep a
secret. I’m sure you’ve heard the
expression ‘Dead men tell no tales.’”

Ito put his hand to his
forehead. “Now you’re being
melodramatic. I should hire you to write
the script for my next film.”

“Your films actually have
scripts? That’s news to me.”

The director had had
enough. “Stop insulting me and leave.”

“I’m going, Ito. But remember what I said about telling what
you know. Once the bullets start flying
at you, it’s going to be too late to reconsider.”